Tradin Organic Agriculture BV v Gold Grain Gida Tarim Ürünleri Sanayi Ve Ticaret Anonim Sirketi

A judgment in default should be set aside under Civil Procedure Rules 1998, rule 13.2 only where the procedural conditions for default judgment were absent. A jumbled bundle does not invalidate service where the particulars of claim were served and the final page contained the statement of truth. Under rule 13.3, the applicant must act promptly and show a real prospect of successfully defending the claim or another sufficient basis for relief. The court must also apply the three-stage relief from sanctions test. Parallel foreign proceedings do not themselves justify a stay where the English claim concerns separate contractual obligations and the risk of inconsistent judgments is marginal. Full and frank disclosure in an application for default judgment is concerned with matters material to the decision, particularly service and any response to service.

Tradin, a Dutch company, brought an English claim against Gold Grain, a Turkish supplier, for sums due under loan agreements. The claim form and particulars of claim were served in Turkey through the Hague Convention process. Gold Grain did not acknowledge service or file a defence, and default judgment was entered.

Gold Grain applied promptly to set aside the judgment under Civil Procedure Rules 1998, rules 13.2 and 13.3. It relied on alleged defects in service, a proposed jurisdiction challenge based on parallel Dutch proceedings, a possible defence on quantum, and alleged failures of full and frank disclosure.

1. Service. The particulars of claim were validly served. The fact that pages appeared in a jumbled order did not invalidate service because the document was internally numbered and paginated, all pages were served, and the final page was signed with a statement of truth. The application under Civil Procedure Rules 1998, rule 13.2 therefore failed.
2. Jurisdiction and stay. Gold Grain had not submitted to the English jurisdiction merely by applying under rule 13 to set aside default judgment. Nevertheless, the loan agreement contained a clear asymmetric jurisdiction clause, read with its heading and structure, despite infelicitous drafting. The agreements were stand-alone loan agreements with defined payment terms. The Dutch proceedings concerned the exclusive supplier agreement and defective-product counterclaim. Any overlap was marginal and did not create a sufficient risk of inconsistent judgments or justify a stay. A late jurisdiction application would also require relief from sanctions, and there was no evidence showing a real prospect of obtaining it. [2015] EWHC 328 (Comm) was taken into account on that issue.
3. Prospect of defending the claim. There was, just, a real prospect of defending parts of the quantum claim, including arguments concerning deductions from shipment values and an alleged September 2021 agreement. That was insufficient because the delay and failure to engage with the proceedings meant relief from sanctions would not be granted. The six-month delay after knowledge of the claim had no good reason. The parallel Dutch proceedings and the disordered documents did not justify the failure to acknowledge service, challenge jurisdiction, or defend the claim.
4. Full and frank disclosure. The duty required disclosure of matters material to the decision on default judgment, including service out of the jurisdiction and any response to service. The alleged omission concerning the wider contractual and Dutch litigation background was not material. Default judgment would still have been entered had the full factual matrix been disclosed.
5. The application to set aside default judgment was dismissed.